El Dorado County, California Bridges: Mount Murphy Road Bridge across the South Fork of the American River (2)

January 2013 (38.8015 Degrees, -120.8906 Degrees) Mount Murphy Road Bridge

Another view of the Mount Murphy Road Bridge across the South Fork of the American River. According to the always reliable Bridgehunter, this bridge was built by D.M. Bassi and H. Williamson, and designed by Henry Lahiff.  It's a nine panel Pratt through truss with a width of 10.5 ft and a vertical clearance of 13.7 ft.   In 2011 the substructure was rated good, the superstructure was rated fair, and the deck was rated poor.

One of the big efforts in the U.S. over the last 10 years has been providing local agencies with money to evaluate scour at bridge foundations. However, this bridge has not been evaluated for scour (as of 2011) and the foundation hasn't even been identified. The bridge has a sufficiency rating of 0 out of 100 (structurally deficient) because of substandard load carrying capacity and inadequate roadway geometry. The cost to replace the bridge has been estimated at about $2 million. Because the bridge is almost 100 years old, and eligible for the national Register of Historic Places, I don't think replacement is an option. More likely, it will become a pedestrian bridge and a roadway bridge will be built beside it.

El Dorado County, California Bridges: Mount Murphy Road Bridge across the South Fork of the American River (2) by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.